WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET STUCK

Summer is the best time for rising seniors to write their personal essay.

What happens when you try to write but end up stuck?

Writing a personal essay for the Common Application is different from writing an analytical essay for school. The personal essay allows for an extraordinary amount of flexibility within the 650-word limit. With that much freedom, students often don’t know where to begin.

If you are stuck, try to:

• Pick a focused topic, then explain what the topic is and why it interests you.

• Explore something you are passionate about and explain why you love it in detail.

• Return to a piece that you wrote for school and expand your writing with more specific examples.

Start writing your main body paragraphs first and use your own experiences to flesh out your topic. Writing a standard college essay is fine, but you can also write more creatively if that feels comfortable to you.

Allow yourself to drop into a creative space when writing your personal essay. Try some descriptive writing, explore how two different things might relate to each other, and pay attention to what your writing might say about you.

Compassion and flexibility are both important in moving forward in your writing process. Don’t judge each word you put on the page or expect to create well-reasoned paragraphs as you begin to write. Getting unstuck involves relaxing your normal approach and allowing more fluid and promising ideas to emerge.

Parents hire me to support personal essay writing. E-mail me:  michelle@samaracollegeadvising.com